Absolutely BRILLIANT! Review of "Everyday Engineering" by Professor Stephen Ressler

This is my 45th or so completed The Great Courses' course. This is my second completed course from Professor Ressler (the previous one I have watched and reviewed was: "Understanding the World's Greatest Structures.")

This course on Everyday Engineering (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/everyday-engineering-understanding-the-marvels-of-daily-life.html) is just simply, in one word, BRILLIANT! The course is organised into 9 main topics:

1. House building and its own sub-systems;

2. Water supply and waste water treatments;

3. Energy supply, transmission and distribution;

4. Heating, ventilating and air-conditioning;

5. Telephone and telecommunications;

6. Simple machines around the house and their designs;

7. Automotive engineering;

8. Highway, traffic, railroad and tunnel engineering;

9. Solid waste recycling and sustainability.

It was capped by a nice real-life case study in the second half of the final lecture (lecture 36). Totally awesome!

What I like about this course includes the following points:

a. It provides a high-level synthesis (and integration) of various important and practical topics. Whilst it goes into details in some topics, the course retains the ability to keep the high-level overarching BIG PICTURE understanding in tact for viewers. For instance, the lectures describing the generation of power from mining of coal or gas all the way to transmission and distribution to individual homes, are just mind-blowingly refreshing.

b. Professor Ressler is just simply, one of the best (if not THE BEST) lecturers I have listened to, even by the very high standards of The Great Courses lecturers. His enthusiasm, his tone of voice, his ability to explain complex things simply and efficiently, and his use of practical models (as well as computer models) to enable viewer understanding, are just incredible aspects of his outstanding teaching technique. For instance, now I understand how a toilet works after I flush it, from his simple model describing the "vacuum suction" creating the pull.

c. Many WOW moments in the course of "oh I didn't know that before" feeling. Memorable examples include:  Now I understand why the need for three (or four) power lines on tall transmission lines; How cellular mobile telephone system works; How a speaker works (!) ; How to identify the location of trains automatically using some clever sensor systems.

d. It shows important applications of important engineering principles such as:

- Tradeoffs (e.g., cloverleaf highway interchange tradeoffs of automobile speed (flow) vs road safety),

- Buffer / redundancy system (e.g., in red-light system has a buffer 'pause' system to allow for drivers not stopping in time),

- The necessity of the Integration / synthesis of sub-systems (e.g., 8 or so sub-systems in house-building) needing to speak to each other,

- Constraints (e.g., most road construction is constrained to locally available fill)

- and The importance of using 'Frameworks' rather than through trial and error (i.e., standing on the shoulders of previous giants), e.g., the Otto cycle in internal combustion engine of a car.

e. A great final case study (lecture 36) integrating all of the above topics. I won't share what the final case study is - you have to view it for yourself. :)

If you are at least tempted to get this course, do it (don't hesitate!). I have learnt a lot from it. Thank you, Prof Ressler!!